Izenberg: At Kentucky Derby, some 'traditions' are better off left in the past

Luke Sharrett/AFP/Getty ImagesA mint julep, the official drink of the Kentucky Derby, sits in the grandstand Friday at Churchill Downs.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Well, here at the site of horse racing’s last great cavalry charge this side of the Light Brigade, let us pause and give thanks to the happy truth that this ain’t your father’s Kentucky Derby — thank God.

Long gone are the days when the local chamber of commerce behaved as though it were staffed by Ali Baba and the 40 thieves ... when cab drivers ad-libbed their own flat rates and it would have been cheaper to book a Mediterranean cruise than pay the going rate for a 10-block ride ... each of them trolling for that weekend of weekends when one of them catches a mark like that visiting sheik who came here one year as the guest of Ashland Oil, and hired two cabs for the week — one for himself and one for his harem.

And gone are the shameless days when the prices on the menus went up daily during Derby Week ... and downtown hotels were so arrogant they doubled up customers without bothering to tell them.

Some things, however, do remain constant. They still stuff grass into perfectly good bourbon and create what sentimentalists call mint juleps and what the real drinkers call something you will not read here, this being a family newspaper. And, rest assured, the hotel cat burglars, the hustlers and rustlers, the pickpockets and ladies of the evening, morning and afternoon can be counted on to keep alive the old status quo.

In addition to this, some other things will not change. Saturday, the worshipers at the Shrine of the Bleeding Fetlock will do their semi-sober best to keep those things alive. Once again, as the colts walk slowly into view for the post parade, the slurred tones that only 150,000 drunks can generate will croak yet another chorus of “My Old Kentucky Home,” known among America’s finest migrant bump-and-grab specialists as Stephen Foster’s Hymn for Visiting Pickpockets.
And once again Saturday, we will be treated to the grimy beauty of the Churchill Downs infield in full blossom.

To the denizens of the infield area (roughly 60,000, if you include the alcoholically comatose as well as the staggering semi-ambulatory), it is the opportunity to press all that flesh into an area of less than one square mile and bring a little Kentucky Derby charm to the moment — if you associate charm with too much alcohol, too few clothes, too much belligerency and too much earlier preparation time spent in the bathroom at home reading the Karate Gazette along with a host of other characteristics, which are considered socially redeeming only to defrocked troglodytes.

This is a group which, for the most part (with apologies to Oscar Wilde), can only be described as the unspeakable in search of the un-see-able. In the intense crush of flesh pressing against flesh as they stampede toward the fence for a faint glimpse of horses’ legs whizzing by, some very intimate — albeit anonymous — friendships will be momentarily formed.

Since it began, the Derby has stood the test of time and the change of morality. You can rain or snow on it, throw the Kentucky National Guard at it, stone (and the word is used advisedly) it with mint juleps or send stark naked streakers across its infield — and over its 137 years of existence, all these have been factors — but the one thing you cannot do is change it.

Some folks call this tradition. Others call it stubbornness. Where else can you find a museum like the one just up the road in Lexington, where the hottest cultural relic is the late Secretariat’s baby tooth? Where else would the local security have the nerve to tell an invading army of college kids: “You can’t bring your own booze in here” and then actually try to enforce the edict?

George Armstrong Custer had a better shot when he yelled, “Take no prisoners!”

The more things change here, the more they stay the same. More than a decade ago, it was announced that a man named Brereton Jones was a big winner ($18,287) in an awards competition for horse breeders, which the governor of the state had helped create. Brereton Jones also happened to be the Governor of Kentucky. The following year, he collected more than $16,000 in the same competition. Go argue with that.

Then something called the Executive Branch Ethics Commission did, but The Gov still got to keep the money.

Dearly beloved, let us pray that this knowledge never reaches New Jersey or, just as sure as the Jersey Turnpike transverses the state, we all will wind up swallowing mint juleps in the parking lots at the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

Which brings us to the reason for this assemblage — a race part classic and part mugging ... too many horses (19) of unequal abilities in too little space ... a race so rough that only one winner has ever been disqualified.

As a case in point was the Derby of 1933 that produced a marvelous photo of a stretch duel involving not only Brokers Tip and Head Play but their jockeys as well, and not necessarily in that order.

It shows Don Meade, the jockey on Brokers Tip, leaning over and trying to pull Herb Fisher, up on Head Play, off his mount while Fisher has a hold of Meade’s saddle.

The rule of thumb in this race then was, as it is now and will forever be, “no autopsy no foul.” Nobody was disqualified.

Saturday it will be as always ... the longest race any of these equine heroes, metaphorically just out of diapers, has ever run ... a version of Jersey Shore bumper cars ... and a brutal stretch run (the second longest in America), where horses coming at the leader will be hard-pressed to dodge horses wearily moving backward.

With that in mind, we repeat a story told here before but still just as valid anywhere where they race horses.

You are referred to an ancient, toothless groom named Shotgun Foley, who warned a fellow about the folly of such things during a casual conversation as he watched his charge peacefully graze behind the stable area a couple of days before the 1975 Derby:

“Horses is smarter than peoples. You don’t see no horses standing in no line to bet on no peoples. Never disremember this.”

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Jerry Izenberg, The Star-Ledger’s Columnist Emeritus, covered his first Kentucky Derby in 1963. He has covered 43 of the past 47 for this newspaper.